On April 23, 1928 Shirley Temple was born at 9:00 a.m. in Santa Monica, California. Shirley was the youngest of three children. She had two older brothers who were twelve and fourteen when she was born. When she was three she went to dance school at Ethel Meglin Dance Studios in Hollywood. Then in 1931 Shirley got her first job in a film called Baby Burlesque. Three years later Shirley Temple became the youngest child to ever win an Academy Award at the age of 8. In 1934 Shirley joined the worlds top earning stars at number eight and soon topped out at number one. She filmed Little Ms. Market and she started earning $1,000 per week. Overall she was in eighty-two films. When Shirley was thirteen she retired from acting after she lost the main roll in The Wizard Of Oz to Judy Garland.
When Shirley turned seventeen she married a man in the United States Army Air Corps named John Agar. Shirley and John made two movies together. These movies were The Bachelor and the Bobby Sox and Fort Apache. They had one baby girl named Linda in 1948. Later Shirley and John got a divorce and she then remarried in 1950 to a man she met in Honolulu named Charles Alden Black. Charles was a California businessman who was nine years older than she was. They got married in December of that year and eventually had two children together. One was Charles Alden Black Jr., born in 1952, and the other was Lori, born in 1954. In 1958 Shirley made a comeback on television with her show, Shirley Temple Storybook. Then she starred in Shirley Temple Theatre in 1961. In 1967 Shirley ran for Congress, but did not win it. Then in 1969 President Nixon appointed her as the 24th representative of the General Assembly to the United Nations. In 1974 she was appointed as the U.S. ambassador to Ghana. Ten years later she was presented with an Oscar, which she dedicated to her mother Gertrude Temple. Then on August 4, 2005 her husband died from myelodyspaslic syndrome (a bone marrow disease) at the age of 86, after fifty-five years of marriage. Shirley said that she still has his voice on the answering machine and will never erase it. No child has ever won more fame and popularity than Shirley Temple achieved.